Tasmanian logging jobs at risk, says union chief

CFMEU national secretary
Michael O’Connor
says the Tasmanian Liberals will add to the jobless rate by dismantling the state’s forest peace deal because international investors will shun timber products from “contested" forests.

“At the end of the day, the industry and the union signed an agreement for investment and jobs," Mr O’Connor told The Australian Financial Review.

“If the Liberal Party tears up that agreement either they don’t understand how the market works and they are stupid."

The Tasmanian Forests Agreement was struck between loggers, environmentalists and the previous government to end decades of conflict over the state’s forests.

The Hodgman government was elected on a promise to tear up the agreement, while the federal Coalition has started unwinding the World Heritage listing for some areas protected from logging under the deal.

The moves threaten to restart a war with conservationists, which will see Tasmanian wood products again defined as contested and therefore unpalatable to the world market.

“There is no way an international investor will ever go anywhere near the forest products industry if there is an ongoing conflict," Mr O’Connor said.

“It just won’t happen. They’ve got too many other places to invest." He made the comments as he launched an advertising campaign highlighting the union’s role in ensuring workers’ safety.

Related Quotes

Company Profile

Television and newspaper ads seek to explain the union’s often militant response to disputes, including the blockage of Grocon, which is still the subject of a court battle.

The construction branch of the CFMEU has filed an appeal against the sentence it received over the blockades of Grocon sites in Melbourne in 2012.

The Victorian Supreme Court earlier this year issued a $1.25 million fine and unprecedented criminal convictions over a string of contempts of court after the union was found to have ignored court orders.

The union’s notice of appeal lodged earlier this month argues that the identical penalties for several of the counts of contempt did not reflect their varying degrees of seriousness. The CFMEU will also contest the unprecedented findings of criminal contempt.

It will also argue a technical point that the trial judge applied the wrong definition of contempt that did not take into account the need to demonstrate a “contemporaneous" and “deliberate" defiance of the court.

The union’s appeal also says that a finding that the union obstructed access to a site in Footscray was wrong because there was insufficient evidence that the union was behind the blockade or that any such blockade was intentional.